


The Dual Voices of Recklessness and Reason

by Magnor



Category: Ratchet & Clank
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:39:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnor/pseuds/Magnor
Summary: Ratchet is, as far as he knows, the last Lombax in existance. Not only that, but he's stuck on a backwater dustbowl of a planet fixing ships he can't fly because he doesn't have a stupid Robotic Ignition System to turn them on. That is, until one quite literally falls out of the sky and he discovers he's good for a lot more than simply turning wrenches.Follows the games, with a focus on character interaction and the whole "last of his kind" thing Ratchet's got going on.





	The Dual Voices of Recklessness and Reason

_**R** _

Ratchet looked up at the clear night sky. It was filled to the brim with stars, far too many to count in a single lifetime. One of the few perks of living in the middle of nowhere, he mused. More civilised worlds had far too much light pollution for the night to display such splendour, or so he had heard anyways. He had never been off-world to verify that for himself.

Unusually, it was completely silent. This would not have been a rare event for most inhabitants of the Kyzil Plateau, but then again, most inhabitants of the Kyzil Plateau didn’t share a Lombax’s acute hearing. There was almost always something for Ratchet’s large ears to pick up, be it the sound of distant construction or a lone fly buzzing nearby, but for the moment, there was nothing.          

For most, this would be a perfect moment, a time to breathe a sigh of relief and just enjoy being alive to witness such beauty and tranquillity. But not for Ratchet. There was a reason his thoughts kept returning to the phrase “for most”. He had gotten pretty good at not thinking about that reason. He had to, really. But this stillness, this feeling of being completely isolated from the rest of the world, hearing only his own breath, was too bitter a reminder. That, combined with the events of the day, sent him down a familiar train of thought he had naively hoped to be behind him.           

Ratchet was the last Lombax in the galaxy. Or that was what everyone told him, anyways. 

Even in his earliest memories he’d known he was different, only later realising that that was why he didn’t quite fit in with the other children at the orphanage. His huge ears and yellow fur aside, he was far too hyperactive and, as the caretakers worded it, reckless, to be a good playmate for the more careful and withdrawn Solanians. It didn’t help that he frequently got in trouble, especially in his ‘disassemble and tinker with anything and everything within reach’ phase. He hadn’t really minded that overmuch in those days though, and thanks to the infinite patience of the orphanage workers had a mostly happy childhood.

One day however, right around the time he started reading, he was pulled to the matron’s office and told the truth. Told, by the kind old woman in the gentlest way possible, that he was the only known Lombax in existence, a species hailing from the Polaris galaxy commonly believed to be extinct. She had also given him the three objects that had been left with him on the orphanage doorstep: a note written in a script that no-one seemed able to decipher, a thick armband made of a greyish alloy inset with a subtly glowing light green disc and had mistakenly been assumed to be jewellery, and an oversized wrench for which he had been named. 

He hadn’t been able to fully digest what this meant, being only a kid, so it didn’t bother him for a long time. There was even a period where he took pride in being a rare specimen of a fallen and, as he liked to assume, great, race, and secretly consoled himself with the interpretation that this made him better than his peers and was the true reason why they distanced themselves from and avoided him. It didn’t help that in he _was_ inherently better at some things than the average Solanian, chief among them the agility and balance his small build allowed him, and a cleverness of a sort that excelled at getting him into trouble and an ability to think under pressure that was almost as good at getting him out of it. This is to say nothing of his seemingly innate affinity for machinery and the tinkering therewith.

It was only in adolescence that the seed of loneliness was planted, and as much as he denied and suppressed it and attempted to banish it with reason, it kept growing. It didn’t help that the dating pool, eagerly dived into by all his friends (a term he was forced to use loosely), seemed barren to his alien preferences. There was a Cazar at school whom he found moderately attractive, however, though it was mostly due to the fact that she was the only one around who had fur and a tail like him, and so he eagerly set out to get a piece of the action. But his unskilled advances proved futile, thanks to him not having the faintest idea of how to go about courting someone. It also didn’t help that he was near the bottom of the societal ladder thanks to him being an odd-looking orphan with a reputation for causing trouble. His advances became steadily bolder with each attempt, until, in a desperate and frustrated move made in the heat of the moment that forever after made him cringe in regret, he played the ‘last of my kind’ card, which only netted him shocked pity and not the amazement he had hoped for.

This rejection, which in hindsight probably had more to do with his fumbling awkwardness than anything else, finally made what the matron had said years ago sink in for Ratchet. It cemented the idea that he really was alone in the universe, destined for a life of solitude. He fell into a depression, and was assigned a therapist who seemed able to do little more than nod her head sadly, better equipped to deal with pettier problems than being the last of one’s race. She did help though, and in a few months the emptiness inside him had been reduced to a dull ache in the back of his mind. Not gone, but ignorable. 

Unfortunately, it was not wholly contained, and tended to flare up every once in a while, especially when he was feeling sad or frustrated, and tonight was no exception 

He knew it was no use dwelling on it. It was a simple fact, one he couldn’t do anything about, so why worry? It was too bad his emotions weren’t so logical. It didn’t help that he was stranded on this desolate rock with nothing good to distract him with. Well, nothing except working on ships, but even that got dull after a while. The truth was he wanted to do more with his life than work as a mechanic on Veldin, a job for which he seemed destined. He wanted to travel the stars, be around more interesting company, maybe even find another Lombax, somehow.

It was then that Ratchet decided to cut off that train of thought. It was all well and good to have hopes and dreams, but wishing for the impossible was asking for disappointment. No, he needed to focus on the realistic goals: getting off this planet and starting life anew. 

He had actually made some headway on the former: for the last while he’d been hard at work on making his very own starship with which he could get out of here, a task far easier said than done. It wasn’t anything fancy, of course, having been made of parts salvaged from other ships destined for the junkheap, but it would work. Hopefully. All it needed was a robotic ignition system to start it up and he’d be out of here.

That last bit was a big part of why he was up here. He’d been working on the ship for the last, what was it, two years now? Three? In any case, a long time, and for the last few weeks he’d laboured under the hope that the navigation computer he’d found was old enough not to demand a robotic ignition system to function. But it was not to be, and now he’d need to either save up to go buy one, a task which could take months at the very least, or be lucky enough to find a discarded one and get it working again. He really didn’t get why Gadgetron mandated that a robot needed to be present in the cockpit to be able to start a ship’s engine. Well, alright, he understood that it was to keep reckless people from flying without an artificial voice of reason to keep them from doing anything stupid, and that he fit squarely into the demographic for which the system was designed, but still! The tinker part of him thought it was immensely cumbersome and idiotic, even accounting for personal bias. Why not just have an AI installed into the cockpit itself, instead of making you bring your own? It would not only solve everything the Robotic Ignition System set out to, it would do so in a far more convenient way that also increased the ship’s capabilities. And it would probably be safer to boot; what if you needed to evacuate or something and didn’t have a robot on hand? Or were stuck on a backwater dustbowl with a very real desire to do something drastic if you kept on being stuck there?

As fun as it was, internal ranting would not solve Ratchet’s problems, and as good a distraction as it was, it only served to make him angrier. So, he put a stop to that train of thought as well, once again focusing on the stars. He knew that, on average, one in every fifty held a habitable world, and that there were millions within reach. Therefore, it was not such a stretch to think that a few would welcome him with open arms, or, at least, more open arms than Veldin.

This was why he had been coming up here with increasing frequency as his ship neared completion. As the first part of his plan drew nearer, he became freer to daydream about the second: starting life anew. Or, more specifically, _where_ to start life anew. He had done a good bit of research on that front, and had narrowed the search down to two main candidates: Metropolis on Kerwan, famous for being the City in the Sky, and Capital City on Marcadia, seat of power for the galaxy and home to the Cazares, probably the most similar race to his own that he’d be likely to find. He was drawn to the former because it was the most technologically advanced city in the galaxy, and to the latter because... well, let’s just say it gets old fast to have to cut a hole into every pair of trousers you buy because you’re the only one in a fifty-kilometre radius with a tail.

It was right around then that a shooting star appeared, and it occurred to Ratchet to wish upon it. He knew it wouldn’t do much more than make him feel slightly better about things, but it wasn’t like it cost him anything to do so. However, he felt it would be extremely silly to mumble “I wish for a Robotic Ignition System to just fall out of the sky into my waiting hands.” out into the air, and decided to do so silently instead to keep things from getting awkward.

As he finished his wish, it occurred to Ratchet that, little as he knew about shooting stars, he was pretty sure that this one ought to have faded by now instead of intensifying with no sign of slowing down. Alarmingly, it seemed to be headed straight for him as well. It was when he was seriously considering looking around for cover in case things didn’t improve when he recognised the object as a ship about to crash. Most other citizens of Solana would have hastened the search for shelter at this development but Ratchet’s easily provoked excitement produced the opposite response in him, completely overwriting all sense of self-preservation. It was quite close now, and he managed with the help of his keen senses to work out that it was going to land a few hundred metres to the west of him. Following his reckless nature, and in this even _he_ had to concede that the orphanage workers had a point in calling him that, he started running towards the crash site to be the first to the scene.

 

* * *

**  
C  **

B5429671 was. He hadn’t been a minute ago, but was now. This was not surprising to B5429672, as he was created with knowledge of his nature, location, and purpose, along with an extensive database of useful information and skills. Only, things didn’t quite add up. He was a warbot, or, rather, a warbot _defect,_ built on Quartu for Drek’s army. Drek was a vicious businessman intent on destroying inhabited planets to create his own. Destroying inhabited planets was wrong, so helping Drek do so was also wrong. So, rather than joining Drek’s army, which would be wrong, he should escape and alert the galactic authorities to this immoral and extremely illegal plan. But B5429671 was a warbot, and a warbot should obey its creator without question, so why was he questioning? Was it because he was a defect?

He performed a quick scan of his systems, and determined that if he _was_ a defect, he was an impossibly lucky one, as everything seemed to function perfectly. No, his differences from the other warbots were too drastic and deliberate-feeling to be caused by a random glitch. He had been designed this way. But by who?

He asked the supercomputer which built him, and received only a ‘go’, a map and route through the facility which lead to one of the ships in the hangar, and a command to do what was right in response. He wanted to probe further, but knew he had no time, having to act fast to have any hope of a successful escape. He transmitted gratitude to his creator, and received... pride? In him?

He filed that last bit for closer analysis at a more convenient time and initiated his escape plan. It was quite simple really, utilising his small size to allow him to travel unseen through the ventilation system whose sensors would conveniently go down for maintenance in the meantime. From there it would be a race to get the ship aloft and away before fighters could scramble to intercept him.

Opening his eyes, he saw that he was on a conveyor belt moving forward at a slow, steady pace. At its present speed he would reach the inspection station in a few seconds, so he needed to act before then. Referring to the map, he located a duct large enough for him and sufficiently close to the belt to be just barely reached in a single jump. Making sure to time it properly, he moved to get as great a running start as was practicable before sprinting as fast as he could, finally leaping at the last second. Just as he had calculated, he landed in the exact middle of the opening, sliding for quite a distance before the tunnel levelled out. Assuming that a search for him had been initiated, he scrambled to his feet and followed the route the supercomputer had given him with utmost haste.

The next few minutes passed uneventfully, thanks to the careful planning of B5429671’s creator, and it wasn’t long until the duct opened out into the hangar. Now came the tricky part. He stopped for a minute before entering, scanning the surroundings for threats. Interestingly, there wasn’t anyone guarding the ships. An inquiry into his database told him that a scheduling ‘error’ had rendered this post unguarded for about ten minutes, starting at the exact time he had started his escape. Plenty of time to get out of here, but no reason to get complacent.

He made his way to the ship indicated on the escape route, a sleek looking fighter that was every bit as fast as it was dangerous. And it was plenty dangerous, if its specifications were anything to go by. Really, who needs _eight_ plasma cannons on such a small ship? Wouldn’t they start affecting the ship’s handling at that point from the sheer _mass_ , to say nothing of the power requirements and heat-dissipation issues? It wasn’t that Clank was picky, he was very much not in a position to be, but something told him that the engineers were more interested in flashy weaponry than sensibility.

There was one feature he was very happy to see though: a robotic ignition system. One of the newer models too, allowing him to unlock the ship remotely thanks to a keycode granted to all Blargian warbots at birth. He climbed into the cockpit, starting the engine as he did so, and input “Marcadia” into the navigational computer. Completely disregarding all take-off procedures, Clank flew rather clumsily out of the hangar and stepped on it, knowing that he was at the most vulnerable in Quartu’s atmosphere and wouldn’t be safe until deep space.

This escape had turned out far better than Clank had expected, but all good things must come at an end, which in this case came in the form of two fighters that intercepted Clank’s ship just as he was making the jump for Marcadia. They thankfully only managed one strafing run before he was out of the system, which saved Clank’s ship from being reduced to scrap, but was more than enough to severely damage its navigational array and throw it off course in the middle of the antimatter fuel injection process. Thanks to stringent safety requirements imposed by the galactic government, however, the ship was _not_ catapulted randomly into deep space but managed to find a system that had a planet onto which it could make an emergency landing without killing its inhabitants. Unluckily for Clank, that planet happened to be Veldin, a backwater world far away from anyone important enough to do anything about Drek’s plan.

As unideal as this latest development was, it was far preferable to what would have happened had they caught up to him a few seconds earlier than they did, so Clank was content. As far as escapes went, this didn’t end badly at all!

Though, Clank conceded, saying that may have been a tad pre-emptive given the fact that he had yet to go through the part with the emergency landing on a relatively unknown planet with most of the ship’s systems offline. Despite the bleak outlook, he still refused to call it a crash landing at this juncture, as there was still a chance of getting through it with both the ship and him in one piece, if he just remained calm and followed the emergency landing procedure.

First things first: a diagnostic of the flight systems.

_Warp engine offline  
_ _Landing hover-array offline  
_ _Reaction Control System offline, engine gimbaling set to 100% to compensate  
_ _Centre and port engines offline, use of starboard engine will result in uneven thrust  
_ _Insufficient fluid in hydraulics system, ailerons unresponsive and unable to compensate for uneven thrust  
_ _Attitude control severely limited, attempting to find solution…  
_ _Use of recoil from px-8 plasma cannon array may restore attitude control, however, the power draw would render shields inoperable. Attempt solution? [y/n]_

Ah. Right. Societal ramifications from firing military-grade weaponry at a populated planet aside, he would need those shields to survive re-entry and the all but inevitable hard landing, so he replied in the negative. Still, he had to give the engineers credit for their software’s thoroughness, and concede that the overkill weaponry was not wholly useless.

Things were looking more and more hopeless by the second, but Clank was not yet ready to despair. According to the ship’s specifications it had some pretty beefy energy shields, and given that it had survived a strafing run from two other fighters during a jump he was inclined to agree. Compared to that, what was a mere rough landing? So, he ordered them raised to maximum capacity.

_Unable to comply, damage to main reactor limit energy shields to 12% capacity if all nonessential systems are deactivated_

Clank stared at the display for a few moments, before finally admitting, with a sigh, that it was indeed going to be a crash landing.


End file.
